So I understand that until you get your first magical staff. you make do with the makeshift one you created.
Questions:
- Do you have to have to expend a spell slot in order to cast cantrips from the makeshift staff? The linked rule says you don’t have to expend any charges, which seems to imply that the staff must have a charge in order to cast any cantrips.
- I assume that once you add the cantrip and 1st-level spell to the staff they can never be changed. The text on page 142 of the APG doesn’t say that you can, but I’m new so don’t know if there’s some other text elsewhere that allows this.
- If true, and considering that these spells can never be changed, I’m thinking of Shield and Mage Armor as my spells. However reading through spells True Strike also seems to be a good option. Although not sure how good that would be for my Illusionist specialist (with Enchantment as other spells I’m focusing on). Thoughts?
Thanks in advance for any guidance you may have!
For the question about cantrips, nope! The extra cantrip is yours to cast freely, with or without charges remaining on the staff.
For the note on changing spells I don’t think you can normally through the feature itself, though you could retrain into the same feature with different selections down the line if needed.
For your last point, since you can technically retrain by taking some of your downtime to basically roleplay as tweaking/re-carving runes on your staff, I don’t know if this is as much a worry for you. You can get good mileage out of things like magic missile as a fallback damage spell, true strike is a also great for trading higher level spell slots that you may not have as much use for at the time for getting your hits to land if you pick up any attack roll spells.
For level 1 spells on the staff that aren’t True Strike/Magic Missile, I’ve always liked: Befuddle, Gust of Wind, Grease, Shockwave, Command, Mud Pit as these mostly stay useful with using those level 1 spell slots and extra charges you can get. Mostly depends on what flavor you’re going for and potentially what staff you want to craft, or are able to get to upgrade your makeshift staff into.
Wow! Befuddle seems really powerful if it lands, even more so the larger their failure gap.
However this brings up a question: From the spell, “The target is clumsy 1 and stupefied 1.” Since those two linked conditions don’t give a duration, nor state that each round the condition is deprecated by 1, how long do they last? It would seem “until cured by a spell” since even the resting rules don’t state that they reduce those conditions. Is that true!?
Befuddle has a Duration listed on the spell of 1 round! So next turn, when your turn starts, it would go away.
If a spell’s duration is given in rounds, the number of rounds remaining decreases by 1 at the start of each of the spellcaster’s turns, ending when the duration reaches 0.
Thank you for that link! However in that link/description I’m still a bit confused by:
Some spells have effects that remain even after the spell’s magic is gone. Any ongoing effect that isn’t part of the spell’s duration entry isn’t considered magical.
So in the case of befuddle, since the clumsy and stupefied conditions don’t give a duration, they’re with the creature until removed in some other manner?
Success The target is clumsy 1 and stupefied 1.
Failure The target is clumsy 2 and stupefied 2.
Critical Failure The target is clumsy 3, stupefied 3, and confused.Compare that with Painful Vibrations:
Failure The target takes full damage, is sickened 1, and is deafened for 1 round.
Critical Failure The target takes double damage, is sickened 2, and is deafened for 1 minute.So in those examples it would seem that sickened is with the creature until they retch a successful Fortitude save, or otherwise have the condition removed. But deafened is for the listed duration, and will eventually clear on its own?
If I’m understanding that correctly then thank you for your guidance! This is such an amazing game.
So with befuddle, because the spell itself notes a duration (this being one round) the spell only lasts until the start of your next turn.
I like painful vibrations as an example, because its a “damage spell” without being a basic save, although it functions very similarly to one.
You’ll note that different from Befuddle’s spell entry, Painful Vibrations has no noted duration, because it is instantaneous. Your conditions that could be applied based on their save results have a specific duration in this case however, because they are separate from the damage done by the spell (which happens and ends during the spell cast). So in the case of painful vibrations, you cast it and they critically fail, you roll your damage, they become sickened 2 until they spend an action to retch (or some other mechanic to rid themselves of a point or two of sickened) and are deafened for 1 minute.
Where the same cast of befuddle still, no matter how badly they flub the save is still a 1 round duration no matter what. That said, despite it’s short duration, it is extremely potent as a spell. Especially for it’s cost when put on a staff. You, in that round, can capitalize on it much less than your allies can offensively, but it is also a great defense against a caster - though they typically have better will saves. Even if they get a success they are casting at a lower DC, lower spell attack and have a chance to just completely waste the spell they were casting.
EDIT: For an example of a longer-lasting Befuddle-like spell, look at Touch of Idiocy.
Thank you! So to solidify this in my bean, I mean brain, with befuddle if they critically fail their save they’re clumsy 3, stupefied 3, and confused only until the start of my next turn? Or is the 1 round until the start of their next turn? Then all conditions cease to affect the target.
Damn, ToI is brutal! Thanks.
Success, Failure or Critical Failure those conditions from Befuddle last until the start of your turn, not the enemies turn.
Thanks!
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll check them out.
Cynical’s answered the question well, though i’d like to chime in and warn against using Mage Armor as your staff spell. Since it’s always going to be level 1, you won’t be getting any benefit from it once you’ve runed up your robes to a basic level of enhancement. Plus, since it’s a spell that lasts all day, there’s little benefit in putting it in a staff to begin with, as the main benefit of being able to “spam” the spells inside of it would be wasted.
Yikes! I think I’d forgotten that the heightened version of the spell is the spell slot, not caster level like cantrips. Thank you.
I’m not incredibly experienced, but for the first question, AoN cites Core Rulebook pg. 592 as:
If a staff contains a cantrip, you can cast that cantrip using the staff without expending any charges. The cantrip’s level is heightened to the same level as cantrips you cast. So I don’t believe a cantrip requires charges to cast, even from a Staff Nexus staff.
And I’m also not seeing any contrary guidance on the unchangeability of the Staff Nexus spells, which quite frankly is a little odd to me, given the rest of the system’s more flexible approach.
